Hang on. To split an infinitive, there needs to be an infinitive, correct? And there is no infinitive there, correct? The infinitive form (in English) being the one that contains the word “to”? As in “to believe”?

Indeed. Syr’Nj was using a perfectly correct conjugation, not an infinitive. One cannot split a conjugation because it is a single word. Grammatically, it’s more that she may have misplaced the adverb “sincerely”. Strictly speaking, it should precede the verb, eg: “You sincerely believe”, rather than “you believe sincerely”. In English, this is somewhat ambiguous as the rules vary between French and German (the primary donor languages for our grammar and syntax), but if pressed I would say the order should be particle adjective subject adverb verb preposition object (eg: the brown horse quickly jumped over Jim).

It’s an optional word order. Not the common one, and therefore it sounds more poetic.
In that respect it’s similar to actually splitting the infinitives; “to go boldly” is far more bland than the naughty “to boldly go”.
Markedness theory will set you up.
In danish there’s a childrens’ song the start of which follows a word order pattern that went out of use a thousand years ago (SOV shifted to SVO), it goes like this “I a farm me build will, there shall be garden to”
Now, in English, word order has become more fixed than in Danish, so in English it doesn’t sound so much poetic as plain weird.
This tidbit was a bonus.

Watch, in the court it’s gonna be like “Oh, he’s not a slayer of trees, he’s a slayer of other humans (and such).” And then her dad would probably pause and go, “Welcome to the family.” lol speculation is fun XD

It’s not the only condition. There are, of course, all sorts of circumstances in which one has a chanced to grab for power, and does not. Mostly, that’s to do with social norms, implicit or explicit social contracts that trade off short term advantages for long term advantages.

The problem is that, apparently, humans and elves aren’t in enough contact to work out contracts enough to trust each other on this sort of issue. That’s the kind of think we need Syr’Nj and Byron to help sort out.

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